Sunday, February 08, 2015

Working Title Warp 2015 Bafta success...Oscar to follow?

...Okay, the Warp 'success' is a little indirect - '71 lead Jack O'Connell (not his only film!) won a public vote for 'Rising Star', but lost out on Oustanding British Film ... won by Theory of Everything (multiple nominations - see this preview report), which WT and the NBC-Universal subsidiaries distributing it will hope may signal Academy success and that potentially lucrative Oscar bounce. Their lead, Eddie Redmayne, has won the Leading Actor Bafta, and it has also scooped up the Best Adapted Screenplay award. See full winners list here.

There are issues with the Baftas positioning themselves as a bellweather for and predictor of Oscars ... aren't these meant to celebrate and promote British success?
Many of Hollywood’s big names will be in attendance; it has become an article of faith that a paparazzi shot in London can be a key opinion-shifter for the all-important campaign to grab Oscar votes before polling finishes on 17 February.
The downside of this is that, over the past decade, critics have claimed that the Baftas have lost some of their cultural distinctiveness, and become a boiled-down version of the Oscars, with the same films and actors being nominated. This year, if awards go they way they are expected to, we are likely to have exactly the same winners in both.
“I think it’s a reflection of the ‘special relationship’,” says Leslie Felperin, film critic for the Hollywood Reporter. “There’s an inevitable overlap in zeitgeist that extends to politics and culture as well as film. It’s more than it ought to be, for sure. If you look at the Césars in France, for example, they are much more proudly French, and they fly the flag for their domestic industry in a more assertive way.” (Guardian report)
Theory got 10 Bafta nominations in total.

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